


Just to Occupy One Minute of Your Day

by catefrankie



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Friendship fluff with some pining, Missing Scene, so basically canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9345344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catefrankie/pseuds/catefrankie
Summary: ‘course, people aren’t exactly lining up to be friends with Veronica these days; he basically only has to share her with the Sheriff and that Wallace kid, so the joke is on…someone.  Probably not Lilly, since Lilly would have enjoyed Veronica’s dramatic me-against-the-world attitude.  Maybe Duncan, except Duncan doesn’t seem to care.  Maybe the joke is on Logan – vendetta or no vendetta, the possessive asshole probably wouldn’t like it much that his old ‘buddy’ Veronica has shown up on Weevil’s doorstep, bearing baked goods of all things.Missing scene post-1.07; Veronica bakes Weevil thank-you cookies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place directly after 1.07, “The Girl Next Door”. It’s exactly 1000 words. Be impressed.

When he thinks about it, Weevil figures that Veronica Mars has always sort of been there, in the peripheries of his life. First as the tiny, smiling girl in the picture he’d catch sight of on the Sheriff’s desk whenever he was brought in for questioning – and later sometimes it was the girl herself, dropping off a bagged lunch or teasing the deputies who treated her like she was a niece they all held in common. Then there were the times he narrowly missed running into her at the Kane house, where Lilly talked about her nonstop, like she was a saint or a superhero or the only thing that made life worth living. He lobbied briefly for the privilege to meet this paragon of whatever, but Lilly always said no. 

“We go to great lengths to keep Veronica innocent,” she explained, seriously, as if this was just as normal to say about your friend as it was about your kid. “You’re prone to shatter innocence. Plus, she’s with Duncan, and Duncan’s friends with Logan, and Veronica’s pretty buddy-buddy with Logan, too, actually –” 

“Screw Logan,” he interrupted, with more vehemence than he’d intended. 

Lilly just laughed at him, and then kissed him, and then he’d stopped caring about Veronica Mars and whether she was being kept safe from him, or he was being kept hidden from her.

Now that he knows her a little better, knows that she may not be a saint but she’s definitely a superhero, he thinks maybe it was neither – Lilly was probably just keeping her for herself. ‘course, people aren’t exactly lining up to be friends with Veronica these days; he basically only has to share her with the Sheriff and that Wallace kid, so the joke is on…someone. Probably not Lilly, since Lilly would have enjoyed Veronica’s dramatic me-against-the-world attitude. Maybe Duncan, except Duncan doesn’t seem to care. Maybe the joke is on Logan – vendetta or no vendetta, the possessive asshole probably wouldn’t like it much that his old ‘buddy’ Veronica has shown up on Weevil’s doorstep, bearing baked goods of all things.

“I have to say,” he announces, yanking open the screen door and plopping down on the porch bench to eyeball her, “I didn’t think there was much you could do that would surprise me, Mars, but this? This is not how I expected my day to end.”

She cocks her head in that stupid way she has – the last remnant of the Veronica Lilly was so keen to protect. “Are you saying you’re not happy to see me?”

He thinks about challenging her word choice, but decides it’s too cheap a shot. “You I’m always happy to see. But you bringing me food? Are you trying to poison me, or trying to get me into bed?”

She smirks, says smugly, “Like I would have to try that hard.” She drops without invitation to sit next to him and passes over the box of cookies. “There’s no arsenic, and I’m not trying to get in your pants. They’re for helping out with that store clerk thing the other day.”

“You think a couple of cookies are going to make us even?” He shakes his head in mock-amazement, but shoves a whole cookie into his mouth anyway so that he can spit crumbs at her while he talks, just because. “V, you could become my personal chef for the rest of your life and still owe me, as often as I’ve saved your pretty little butt lately.”

“This isn’t supposed to make us even,” she says, leaning away from him pointedly, “although I’m sure whatever petty crime you get arrested for next will provide an opportunity for that. This is just about saying thank you. I really appreciate you coming through on this one.”

He shrugs, his mouth full. “You find the girl?”

“Yeah. Didn’t end all that well though. Hence the baking.”

“Gran cooks when she’s upset too.”

“Um?” She looks at him, laughter in her eyes. “You just compared me to your grandmother… You’re hereby forbidden from hitting on me for, like, a _month_.”

He throws a cookie at her, which she catches neatly. She slouches in her seat, imitating his posture, and shoves the whole cookie in her mouth. She works at it for a few seconds, swallows, then sticks her tongue out at him. He jostles her with a shoulder and can’t help cracking a smile when she laughs, easy and delighted. He offers her another of her own cookies and takes one himself, a strange, belated realization washing over him. 

The joke isn’t on Lilly, or Duncan, or Logan. The joke is on him. Lilly went to all that trouble to hide Veronica from him, because she was naive and sweet and he would ruin her. And now, Veronica has been thoroughly ruined by god only knows what exactly, but somehow they’re here anyway, sitting in companionable silence on his porch, eating cookies that she baked for him herself. He missed out on innocent Veronica – and yet here she is. The Veronica that Lilly loved is making a special appearance just for him. 

“I’m un-expelled,” he tells her, after a minute of silence.

“I know,” she says. She chews on her lip, then adds quickly, like she’s getting it over with, “I’m glad.”

He snorts. “Don’t get soft on me, Mars.”

“I’m not!” she protests, indignant.

“We aren’t friends.”

“I know!”

“You still owe me.” 

She groans, vaults to her feet. “Weevil, you are _so predictable_.”

He half-smiles. “Yeah, guess I am.” He stands, adds self-consciously, “You can always count on me.”

She grins at him, swats at his arm. “See you at school, tough guy.”

He watches unmoving as she climbs in her stupid car and baby-talks the dog in the backseat for a solid minute before driving away, and then spends another minute staring into space before he looks back at the box of cookies on the bench.

Yeah, the joke is definitely on him.

**Author's Note:**

> I split my attention between two pieces for the collection because I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get either of them to posting quality in time, but then I neglected all my responsibilities and got _both_ of them to posting quality. Anyway, this was the prologue to a multi-chapter which has been sitting in my drafts for over a year and will never get finished, so I just slapped a sappy ending on it and called it a day. The tense is likely all screwed up in places, because flashbacks confuse me.
> 
> I love Weevil’s relationship with Veronica, and I wish she’d been just marginally less oblivious about everything. I refuse to believe that she never made snickerdoodles for him, though. It happened. Fight me. 
> 
> I wish I knew how to link properly, but [this is the best I can do](%E2%80%9Ccatefrankie.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) if you wanna follow me on tumblr.


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